The Collapse of Civilization Manifesto

Since the 2008 ﬁnancial crash, the world has witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of social protest in every major continent. Beginning with the birth of the Occupy movement in the US and Western Europe, and the Arab Spring, the eruption of civil unrest has continued to wreak havoc unpredictably from Greece to Ukraine, from China to Thailand, from Brazil to Turkey, and beyond. In some regions, civil unrest has coalesced into the collapse of incumbent governments or even the eruption of a prolonged state of internecine warfare, as is happening in Iraq-Syria and Ukraine- Crimea.

Increasing public dissatisfaction with government is correlated with continued government difﬁculties in meeting public expectations. Yet while policymakers and media observers have raced to keep up with events, they have largely missed the deeper causes of this new age of unrest — the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels, and its multiplying consequences for economic growth, industrial food production, and the Earth’s climate stability.

Three decades ago, a revolution occurred in the world economy. Today, we’re living through its extensive political consequences. This revolution consisted of financialization.

Financial services, from banks and hedge funds to trading houses, became the largest industry in the U.S. The impact of this revolution has been incalculable.

Accompanied by the rapid enrichment of a tiny few and stagnation and disappointment for many more. Now the only growth that remains is selling expensive services to each other. The financial revolution has no solution for stagnant wages, income inequality and job insecurity.

During the mid/late 20th century (1960–1999), a barrel of oil cost $19 on average; during the years immediately prior to the Great Recession (2000–2008), the average price of a barrel of oil had increased to $47; and during the years immediately following the Great Recession (2010–2012), the average price of a barrel of oil had further increased to $81. During the same three time periods, the average price of a metric ton of copper increased from $3,085, to $3,713, to $6,817; the average price of a metric ton of iron ore increased from $36, to $57, to $124; and the average price of a metric ton of potash increased from $114, to $185, to $343. (Prices are inflation adjusted.)

The simple fact is that we cannot grow our global economy and improve our global material living standards on $50 oil, $6,817 copper, $124 iron ore, and $343 potash like we did on $19 oil, $3,085 copper, $36 iron ore, and $114 potash. It should come as no surprise that our Non Renewable Resource-dependent global economy experienced the Great Recession during 2009. Nor should it come as a surprise that we have yet to recover from the Great Recession. Nor will our industrialized and industrializing economies ever recover, so long as price levels associated with the vast majority of Non Renewable Resources remain at their inordinately high levels.

The labor participation rate across the world is dropping rapidly. You may be inclined to believe the official unemployment numbers, but, they are a poor indicator of employment statistics. Let us take the United States as an example. The labor participation rates have dropped way below the rates when 1980’s recession unfolded.

China was barely a statistical rounding error in 1978, with less than 1 percent of global trade, China rose to become in 2013 the world’s leading trading nation with almost a quarter of its annual flows. Nothing on this scale or speed has been witnessed before in history. Since 1970, Asia’s per capita incomes have increased fivefold. Even in Africa, the world’s worst performing continent, incomes have almost doubled. The west’s median income, meanwhile, has barely shifted in the last half century.

In arguing for China’s entry to the World Trade Organization, Bill Clinton, the then US president, said globalization was ‘the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water’. In addition, he argued that China’s entry would reduce America’s bilateral trade defect by binding China to lower tariff rates on its imports. Following China’s WTO accession in 2001, America’s trade defect with China has leapt almost five fold. It is clear, in retrospect, that Beijing had better grasp of the global economy’s dynamics than Washington.

In terms of purchasing power parity — measured by what you can buy in the local currency — China economy surpassed the US in 2014. Within a decade, give or take a few years, China will overtake America on more conventional dollar measures. By 2050 — a century after its communist revolution — China’s economy is likely to be twice the size of America’s and larger than all the Western economies combined. And by then, even India’s economy will be roughly the same size as America’s.

Professor Laurence Kotlikoff from the University of Boston is, according to The Economist, one of the 25 most influential economists in the world. He says America’s official debt paints an untrue fiscal picture.

“The problem is the official debt is only the debts that politicians decide to put on to the books. Politicians are able and free to put whatever they want on to the books and keep other things off the books.” What doesn’t get recorded is the value of all future government liabilities and the value of all future receipts, what he calls fiscal gap accounting. Future liabilities would be social security benefits, pensions, health care benefits and defence. These liabilities minus future receipts gives the true picture, Kotlikoff says.

“For the US, the fiscal gap is not $US20 trillion, which is the size of the official debt, but it’s $US200 trillion, ten times larger. So the country’s bankrupt.”

Government Intervention is triggered by a Keynesian belief that aggregate demand can be increased by lower interest rates and by increasing government deficits thereby somehow spurring economic growth. Debt grows faster than income growth and eventually has to be restructured, i.e., everyone loses in the end. Since 2007, global debt has grown by US$57 trillion and it’s had disastrous results. Greece, Detroit, Puerto Rico, Venezuela are just the beginning of this trend. Soon, it will be followed by larger countries like China and United States.

The last law of nature says: that any creature that despoils and outbreeds its natural habitat will be culled to bring its numbers under control and restore a stable environment.

Studies of mice populations indicate that when faced with overpopulation, many catastrophic events occurred. Such as the mothers abandoned their young, the birth rate plunged, homosexuality, mass violence, cannibalism, and lack of maternal functions. Studies revealed as the mice population densities reached a tipping point. Once reached, the population began to suffer a “spiritual death” and went down a “behavioral sink”. (Calhoun, 1962)

Article I of the Constitution of the United States, (1790) describes the House of Representatives, and says that “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand…” In the year 2000 there are over 600,000 persons per member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Thus in 210 years we have seen democracy being diluted by a factor of approximately 600,000 / 30,000 = 20. (Bartlett, 2000)

Simple really..When the world economy collapses everything shuts down..the end..We’re talking about grids down all over the world and 7.5B people dropping like f*** flies in short order..The collapse will be absolutely horrible..There is no collapse or horror movie ever produced that has even come close to imagining what the collapse of BAU might look like..I’m talking about every corporation and every social program going bankrupt at once. I’m talking about people eating people.. I’m talking about the worst catastrophe to ever happen in the history of mankind..Nothing has ever, or will ever come close..

The End of the Human Race will be that it will Eventually Die of Civilization –Ralph W Emerson